X-Mans Ate-Teen: Damn, I Didn’t Want It To Be Over

by D D

When the terrifying Apocalypto descends upon the city, a band of heroes must fight to survive and protect their planet from certain destruction.

Comic Book

comedy

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93 scenes

X-MansDamn, I Didn’t WantIt To Be Over The city was still deep in night when the first stolen ship crossed the river. It fired into the riverfront traffic circle, and the windows along both sides of the street burst outward. Cars struck one another beneath the flashing traffic lights. A bus climbed the curb with its doors still open. Pedestrians scattered in every direction. People ran between stalled cars, stumbled across the sidewalks, and spilled from restaurants into streets already full of screaming. A man lost one shoe crossing the intersection and kept going. Two women dragged a fallen stranger away from the curb while headlights swept over them. Above the storefronts, neon signs flickered through the smoke. Gorge lowered the transport beneath the smoke. Searchlights swept beneath the stolen ships. Gorge cleared the overlapping weapons feed from his screen and banked toward the emergency pad. Below, pedestrians struggled around a stalled ambulance while paramedics led a patient through the crowd. He guided the transport toward the pad, watching the people below his flight path. Behind him, Cyrus tightened the strap across Reen’s bench. The bandages around his chest had stopped soaking through, but Cyrus had not seen him breathe. His bare shoulders moved only when the aircraft turned. Jeanetta came down the narrow aisle carrying her son. “Let me sit with him.” Cyrus moved aside. She studied Reen’s face. Without the scowl, without some remark waiting behind his teeth, he looked like a man she had never met. “You brought us this far,” she whispered. She bent and kissed his forehead. For an instant, warmth passed beneath her lips. Her mind brushed something buried so deep she could not tell whether it belonged to him or to her own need for him to answer. Come back. She waited. His expression did not change. Beneath the dressing, hidden from her, one torn edge of the wound drew a fraction closer. X-Boy touched the edge of a bandage. Jeanetta caught his hand gently and stood. “We have to go,” she told Cyrus. He looked back once before following her. * * * At the rear hatch, Scambit slid a deck of cards from its battered case. Rougie stood beside him with the city spreading beneath the window. She had fastened her gloves twice. The second time, he had watched without pretending not to. “What?” she asked. “Nothing.” “Scambit.” He tapped the deck against his palm. “Just making sure you still here.” She looked through the window, where the city flashed beneath them. “You could’ve said that before everybody started dying.” “I know.” That answer stopped her more effectively than an excuse would have. “When we get down there,” she said, “don’t start acting stupid because somebody look at me.” “I act stupid for plenty reasons.” “Pick less.” He nodded. The smile he tried did not quite settle. “I was jealous. Ain’t your fault.” “No. It ain’t.” Outside, another flash lit the river. She turned toward it, then back to him. “But you still came.” “Always was coming.” Rougie leaned in and kissed his cheek. Scambit’s hand stopped halfway through shuffling the cards. “Don’t make me regret that,” she said. “I’m trying to live long enough to ask what it mean.” “Then keep up.” The transport settled onto a broad emergency landing pad beside the river. Before the hatch opened, her fingers brushed his sleeve. For once, he did not try to turn the small gesture into something larger. * * * Apocalypto stepped from the lead ship onto an empty office roof. Below him, people ran toward the waterfront. Above, Afterborn poured from open hatches and descended between the buildings. Some landed hard enough to crack pavement. Others remained in the air, blasters held beneath their chests, moving without wings. Apocalypto raised his wounded arm. The city had not seen him yet. He changed that. The roof sank beneath his expanding weight. His shoulders rose past the neighboring buildings, his face climbing through a bank of low cloud. Glass shattered against his knees. He stepped down into the avenue, one foot crushing the entrance canopy of a deserted hotel. By the time he straightened, he stood as tall as the towers around him. His shadow crossed six lanes of stopped traffic. Red lipstick gleamed across a mouth wide enough to swallow the streetlights. “Kneel.” The word shook loose dust from the buildings. On the landing pad, Scambit looked up until his neck hurt. “Somebody tell Apocalipstick this ain’t his city.” Stormisha stepped past him. “Tell him yourself.” Z wheeled to the edge of the pad. The first wave of fear struck him before he reached for it: thousands of minds trying to choose a direction, parents losing sight of children, drivers trapped behind locked doors. He closed his eyes. Everyone near the river. Listen to my voice. He sent the thought gently at first, then with enough force to cut through the panic. Move away from the tall buildings. Follow the river east. Leave your cars. Police officers paused in the street below. One looked toward the landing pad, saw Z’s raised hand, and began directing people toward the embankment. Z opened his eyes. “Nightwalka. The bus by the intersection. There are people trapped inside.” Nightwalka vanished before he finished pointing. * * * The Afterborn reached the river road in two ranks. Monsta stood at the top of the pedestrian stairs and waited until the first raised its blaster. Then he moved. He caught the barrel, forced it toward the sky, and drove a fist into the soldier’s chest. Armor folded around his knuckles. The second soldier struck him across the back. Monsta turned upright, shoulders squared, and lifted it by the throat. “Not today, bredren.” He threw it into the others coming up the stairs. Beside him, Lady Longnails stepped beneath a swinging arm. Her claws crossed the soldier’s face from jaw to brow. She pulled it forward, cut through the weapon strap, and kicked it down the steps. Another lunged over it. She caught its face in both hands. Across the road, Scambit spread four cards between his fingers. Violet light crept through their edges. He sent them beneath an overturned delivery van where three soldiers had taken firing positions. The first card struck the axle. The others flashed against the road. The explosion lifted the van and threw the Afterborn clear. Rougie flew through the smoke above it. An airborne soldier met her at the height of a streetlight, its blaster turning toward her chest. She rolled beneath the shot, tore off one glove with her teeth, and caught its wrist. Power rushed up her arm. The soldier’s flight faltered. For a moment she saw fragments without a life around them: white assembly lights, a weapon rack, the same command repeated until nothing else remained. She let go before the flood could swallow her. The soldier fell onto the roof of the empty van. Rougie rose again, shaking her hand. “They fly too!” she called. Scambit charged another card. “Then knock ’em down where I can reach!” * * * Nightwalka found a woman, a boy, and a man pinned beneath a bus seat. He teleported the first two to safety, then hooked his tail around the seat brace and pulled the injured man free. They vanished as an Afterborn shot burned through the windshield. He returned behind the soldier, yanked its ankles out with his tail, and smashed its own blaster against its skull. Misty landed beside him wearing the face of an Afterborn commander she had seen near the tower hangar. “East stairwell,” she told the soldiers approaching from the intersection. “All units.” Two turned. The third stared at her. Its weapon rose. Misty changed before it fired. Her body narrowed beneath the barrel, one arm stretching to wrench its wrist aside. She drove its own weapon beneath its chin and pulled the trigger. The blast lit her blue face. Nightwalka appeared behind the next soldier and tripped it with his tail. Misty finished it against the curb. “Thought they listened better,” he said. “They never did.” She caught his sleeve as another shadow passed overhead. Nightwalka looked up at the soldier aiming its blaster at them. “Poof.” They vanished together. The shot tore through the empty pavement where they had stood. * * * Three Afterborn advanced on Ice Tray beneath the parking garage. His freezing breath swept over them, sealing their armor and bodies in solid ice. Before they could fire again, a second, violent blast shattered all three across the ramp. Lightning struck a fourth soldier descending behind him. Stormisha landed beside the wreckage, rain gathering around her feet. At the foot of the garage, civilians crowded against a collapsed walkway. The safe route to the river ended at a drop. Stormisha lifted water from below while Ice Tray exhaled along the surviving supports, freezing a broad span with rails on either side. “Walk,” he told the crowd. “Don’t run.” An Afterborn shot cracked the ice beneath the first family. Stormisha drove the shooter away with a gust while Ice Tray sealed the fracture with another freezing breath. He stayed there until the last evacuees reached the embankment. Then he froze through the empty bridge’s joints. Stormisha swept the broken sections onto the road, forming barricades against the approaching soldiers. * * * Across the river, a huge column of Afterborn marched over the main road bridge toward the city. Rank after rank filled the roadway, their blasters held across their chests. The line stretched back through the smoke to the far bank. At the city end, police abandoned a barricade and ran toward the evacuation road. Z saw them coming. So did the others. Monsta turned from the landing pad, and Scambit reached for another deck in his coat. A blue-white ring opened above the river, widening into a portal. Beyond it, unfamiliar stars shone over the scarred surface of Orukai. Then cannon fire tore across the bridge. The front rank vanished in a chain of explosions. Two angular combat ships swept through the portal, bright engines blazing behind their armored hulls. Their guns tracked along the roadway, blasting the Afterborn apart before they could scatter. Soldiers raised their weapons and disappeared beneath the next barrage. The ships swept the whole length of the column until the last marching figure fell. Burning armor littered the bridge, but the road beneath it still held. Rougie stopped above the avenue and looked toward the river. Nightwalka appeared beside Misty, staring upward. For a moment, every X-Man who could see the bridge watched the unfamiliar ships bank toward them. A broad transport followed the fighters through the portal. The ring contracted behind its engines and vanished. Three familiar notes sounded over Gorge’s receiver. “Gorge? Please tell me you still got that ugly gun.” “Jubileequa?” One combat ship turned its guns on a stolen craft climbing toward the newcomers. Its engines failed under the shots. Beams of light caught the falling hull and guided it away from the city. “Z!” Gorge shouted. “They answered!” Z looked up at their rescuers, relief cutting through the strain on his face. Then he reached for the soldiers descending toward the evacuation road. Their minds were not empty. They were narrow, drilled around a handful of commands. He pushed an image into the leader’s perception: an enemy formation crossing from its right. It turned and fired into the empty wall. The others broke around it. Monsta reached them before they could correct their aim. * * * The broad Zolari transport touched down beside Gorge’s ship, its engines dimming as a ramp lowered from its armored hull. Jubileequa came down its ramp in a yellow jacket, short dark hair swept back from pink glasses. Her skin was teal. A warm yellow-skinned pilot followed, carrying a medical case in hands broader than a human’s. They were human-sized, with slightly larger eyes and smooth skin where outer ears should have been. Deacon stepped out last, orange-skinned and broad-shouldered in charcoal armor, carrying an enormous blaster across his chest. Its thick barrel extended beyond his hip, and a power cable joined the stock to a pack between his shoulders. A pale gold light moved beneath the palms of his large hands. Gorge reached Jubileequa first. She hugged him hard enough to knock the gun harness sideways. “We thought you were dead.” “Been a popular opinion lately.” Stormisha landed at the edge of the pad as a retreating Afterborn struck the railing behind her. She sent it over the side with a sweep of wind and looked toward the visitors. Gorge touched her arm. “Stormisha. This is Jubileequa. We worked together on Orukai.” “Ooh, y’all got hood names on Orukai too?” “Girl, it’s hoods in every planet.” Jubileequa turned as a blaster shot hit the landing pad. Bright pink and gold sparks gathered between her fingers. She flicked them toward the roof opposite. They scattered around the shooter’s head, flashed too brightly to look at, and exploded against its chest. Stormisha watched it disappear behind the parapet. “Okay. I like her.” Deacon stepped in front of the next shot. Energy struck his raised palm and spread across his armor instead of throwing him back. He closed that hand around the blaster’s forward grip. Gold light poured through its power cable. He braced the enormous gun against his shoulder and fired at the soldier that had shot him. The blast punched through its armor and hurled it across the roof. The roof flashed. For an instant, every window along the block reflected gold. Deacon kept the huge blaster shouldered while its barrel vented heat, and the seams of his armor cooled from white to amber. A second shot struck his chest before he could turn. He absorbed it, but this time his boots slid several inches across the pad. He swung the barrel toward the shooter and fired again. Jubileequa saw the movement. She threw a chain of sparks above his head, each bright point bursting just late enough to catch the Afterborn trying to flank him. Through her pink glasses, the light painted the soldiers in shifting colors. The smallest bursts distracted their aim. The ones she closed her fist around struck like grenades. Gorge recognized the rhythm of her fighting. On Orukai, she had used the same carefully spaced flashes to guide rescue crews through dust after their workshops fell. Here she sent them between buildings, clearing a path for ships whose pilots had crossed an impossible distance to answer a voice they thought they had lost. The Zolari troops spread from the ramp in pairs, their differently colored faces briefly visible beneath open helmets. A yellow-skinned engineer knelt beside the riverfront power box and isolated the damaged street grid. A teal soldier braced a portable shield while another helped the ambulance crew reach the pad. They were not a fresh army without losses of its own. Their armor had been repaired in mismatched sections; several ships carried scorch marks older than this battle. Gorge knew what it had cost them to come anyway. “Talk while moving,” he said. Jubileequa rolled her eyes at Gorge. “Still like that.” Gorge lifted his gun. Its targeting screen recognized the Zolari craft behind him and linked to their network. Beneath the soldiers’ separate signals, the scan revealed one living pulse feeding every Afterborn. It rose and fell in time with Apocalypto’s power. Their orders could travel through machines, but their lives remained bound to the being who had made them. “Good. We need somebody organized.” * * * Magnetrick landed in the street beside Z as another empty car slid out of the evacuation route. Above them, Apocalypto’s shadow crossed the buildings. For a moment they watched the same enormous hand reach across the avenue. “It’s funny,” Z said. “Just a few weeks ago, you were here in these streets causing a ruckus. Now here you are.” Magnetrick looked at him, then laughed. “That’s another reason I’m pissed off. This asshole is doing it better than me.” A smile broke through Z’s tired expression. “Then perhaps you should stop him.” “Gladly.” Magnetrick turned toward the avenue. Three police officers came around an abandoned cruiser and raised their rifles at him. “Hands where we can see them!” one shouted. “You’re supposed to be in detainment!” Behind the officers, four Afterborn landed in the road. Their blasters swung toward the unprotected backs in front of them. Magnetrick lifted one hand. The rifles tore from the officers’ grips. They spun in the air, barrels pointing past their shoulders, and fired. The officers ducked as bullets hammered the approaching soldiers. Magnetrick held the weapons steady until all four Afterborn lay dead on the pavement. He lowered the rifles to the road. The officers stared at the bodies behind them, then back at him. “You’re welcome.” A section of loading dock tore loose beneath his boots. He rose on it toward Apocalypto without waiting for an answer. Z watched him climb. Metal moved around him in deliberate paths. Blasters twisted out of Afterborn hands. An empty bus slid sideways to block a street before Apocalypto’s falling debris could strike the people running through it. Behind that barrier, Zolari pilots guided civilians into a cargo hold. Apocalypto reached across the avenue and tore the top floors from a vacant office building. Magnetrick caught the mass before it reached the street. His platform sank several feet. Windows burst around him. Steel fought his grip, tangled through concrete, furniture, the weight of rooms never meant to hang in the air. He turned the wreckage toward an evacuated construction site and lowered it until the ground shook beneath it. Apocalypto looked down. “You should have stayed beneath me.” Magnetrick lifted his chin. “I have never been good at that.” He pulled. Armor plates tore loose from Apocalypto’s knee. The giant staggered against a tower, crushing its empty lower windows. Magnetrick sent the plates into the exposed joint, forcing Apocalypto to turn away from the evacuation route. For a moment, the avenue opened. Cyrus ran through it with Jeanetta and X-Boy. Their son was wrapped in the white nursery blanket, fastened over one shoulder and gathered around him. He kept looking at the man above the buildings. “He’s too big,” he whispered. Jeanetta took his hand. “Stay with me.” She began to lift them both toward the roof of a cleared municipal building. Before they could fly, a few Afterborn appeared behind them. Jeanetta turned the first blaster aside with a thought, sending its shot into the empty sky. She crushed the weapon around its owner’s hand and hurled the soldier against the far parapet. A second soldier reached for X-Boy. He flinched, and every soldier flew backward, crashing against the surrounding buildings. Before they could rise, Jeanetta tore a metal service hatch free and pinned them beneath the twisted panel. X-Boy stared at his hands. “You protected yourself,” she told him. “Now stay close.” Below, Cyrus saw that they had landed safely, then turned toward the Afterborn crossing behind them. A narrow blast swept the street at shoulder height. Three soldiers fell. He stepped through the smoke and fired again. * * * Gorge’s first shot struck an airborne Afterborn beneath the breastplate. The disruption pulse killed its flight field. It dropped straight into a net of ice Ice Tray had woven between two parking structures with sweeping blasts of his breath. “Left side!” Gorge called. Monsta caught the second before it reached the transport ramp. He held it upright against the railing while Gorge pressed the muzzle to its chest and fired. The soldier’s armor went dark. Monsta threw it clear. “Same receiver as the tower?” he asked. “Modified. They can choose where to go, but the flight system still needs the relay.” Monsta looked up. Six soldiers were turning over the road toward Rougie. “Then stop making it one at a time.” He helped Gorge brace the gun against a cargo clamp. Gorge widened the pulse on the screen, sacrificing range. Monsta held the barrel steady as he fired into the formation. Three flight fields failed together. Rougie caught one falling soldier by the shoulder, drained it until its arms went slack, and hurled it toward the other two. “Like that!” she shouted. Jubileequa followed her through the sky on a narrow Zolari flight board, throwing handfuls of sparkling light into the soldiers above them. One burst spread like glitter around a squad, blinding their aim. The next detonated behind them and drove them into Stormisha’s gathering wind. Deacon stood below, absorbing stray blaster fire before it could reach the evacuation line. When his armor brightened almost white, he planted both feet and fed the stored energy into his blaster. The gun roared. Its heavy shot tore down the emptied street and struck the advancing soldiers head-on. Afterborn scattered across the pavement. Misty ran past him wearing a soldier’s face. She let the disguise fall as she reached the nearest enemy, drove her heel into its knee, and turned its head until it dropped. Above them, Apocalypto saw her. For the first time since the desert, his attention fixed on a face smaller than his own. “You.” Misty looked up. “Still here.” “I crushed you.” “You tried.” His hand came down toward her. Nightwalka appeared at her side. They vanished together as the pavement exploded beneath Apocalypto’s palm. They reappeared on the far side of the intersection. Misty raised her face toward him, refusing to hide it. “I don’t work for you anymore.” Apocalypto’s answer shook the intersection. Afterborn on the roofs aimed at Misty together. She copied the nearest soldier’s face and darted across their line of fire, ducking beneath a truck as their shots tore through the real soldier behind her. Nightwalka teleported her behind the remaining shooters. His tail tripped one while she drove the other’s face into its weapon. She kept striking until her son touched her wrist. Across the street, Magnetrick was climbing toward Apocalypto. An aircraft passed between them before she could call out. * * * Magnetrick followed Apocalypto up the side of a glass tower. The giant’s damaged knee had begun to close around the metal lodged inside it. Magnetrick pulled harder, drawing more armor loose and driving Apocalypto away from the river. Then the huge body contracted. Apocalypto shrank as he stepped onto a roof below Magnetrick’s platform. His shoulders descended beneath the neighboring towers, the wound at his knee narrowing until he stood only a little taller than Magnetrick. He had chosen a roof with no civilians on it. Magnetrick stepped from his platform onto the ledge. Below him, the city had become layers of movement. Monsta stood against a tide of soldiers near the garage. Rougie crossed above a bus full of people, forcing two flying Afterborn away from its windows. Farther east, emergency lights marked the route Z had cut through the panic. Magnetrick could feel the buses moving, the metal stretchers, the bolts holding the last safe stairway to the embankment. Apocalypto had reduced himself to a size a man could look in the face. That seemed like an invitation. Magnetrick pulled one last wave of loose metal from the roof and stepped closer, meaning to hold him here while the others finished clearing the city below. For once, he did not need to win an argument with Z. He only needed to give him enough time. The air filled with metal. Roof housings, pipes, the panels of an abandoned service elevator. They struck Apocalypto from four directions and pinned him against the roof access structure. “You should have run farther,” Magnetrick said. Apocalypto’s right hand moved beneath a twisted panel. He caught Magnetrick’s wrist when the smaller man reached to wrench the final plate from his armor. Gray light spread from the grip. Magnetrick tried to pull away. His metal restraints shuddered, then fell. The platform behind him dropped onto the roof. For a fraction of a second, he could still feel every bolt in the building. Then the connection disappeared as completely as a light going out. He reached for a pipe. It did not move. Apocalypto held his wrist tighter. The gray light crawled into Magnetrick’s arm, smothering the power at its source. “Did you think I only knew how to give orders?” Magnetrick struck him with his free hand. Apocalypto barely turned. He drove his fist through Magnetrick’s chest. The helmet struck the roof behind him. Magnetrick’s knees bent, but Apocalypto held him upright by the ruined front of his coat. Below, Z felt something vanish from a mind he had known for decades. He looked up. Apocalypto threw Magnetrick over the ledge. For years, height had meant nothing to him. He had trusted the metal beneath every road, behind every wall. Now he reached as he fell and nothing answered. He struck the pavement beside the municipal plaza. The stone broke around his shoulders. A small ring of fragments jumped outward and settled against the curb. His hand reached once toward the twisted railing a few feet away. Nothing in it answered. He could see the metal as plainly as he had always seen it, bright beneath the streetlights, but the world he had carried around himself for decades had gone silent. Above him, Apocalypto’s shadow lengthened over the roof. He turned away from the ledge, leaving the small broken body below without another glance. Magnetrick tried to turn his head toward the river. There were still people moving along the evacuation road. He held on to that sight until a familiar blue hand entered it. The sound cut through the battle. * * * Misty reached him before Z. She knelt in broken stone and caught Magnetrick’s hand. His eyes moved toward her. Blood spread beneath his back, filling cracks too quickly for her to cover. “No,” she said. “Trick. Look at me.” Rougie landed with Z, setting his chair beside them. He leaned forward and took Magnetrick’s other hand. For an instant, the plaza disappeared beneath a younger voice, a crowded room, a man who had believed they could build something no one would be able to take from them. Z had spent years arguing with him because some part of him had assumed there would always be another argument. “Stay,” he said. Magnetrick looked from Z to Misty. His mouth moved, and they leaned closer. “I’m…I’m sorry… for everything.” Misty pressed her forehead against his hand. Her blue fingers trembled around his. His eyes stayed on them until he could no longer hold them open. His grip loosened. Z waited through the next breath that did not come. Then his face changed. Misty had seen his anger, his exhaustion, his terrible quiet. She had never seen him cry. A tear crossed his cheek and fell onto the hand he still held. “Goodbye, old friend.” He could not make the words louder. Misty bowed over Magnetrick’s body. Around them, the fight kept moving, cruel enough to leave them no private silence. Lady Longnails reached the plaza and stopped. One look was enough. She knew Magnetrick would tell her to keep fighting. She turned toward the soldiers entering from the avenue, her claws extending until they scraped the stone. The first one never raised its blaster. * * * In the transport, Reen drew a breath that tore through him like another wound. He sat up and nearly fell from the bench. The bandages across his chest pulled tight. Beneath them, skin knitted around the edges of the damage Apocalypto had left. He held still until the room stopped moving. His shirt was gone. Blood had dried along his ribs and waist. Somebody had wrapped him carefully enough that the dressing stayed in place when he stood. Outside, a blaster struck the hull. Reen looked toward the open hatch. “Oh, y’all still doing this.” He stepped onto the ramp shirtless, chest bandaged, one hand braced against the frame while his strength returned. Rougie passed above the landing pad with an Afterborn struggling in her grip. She looked down, saw him, and nearly lost hold of the soldier. Then she grinned and winked. Reen lifted two fingers in answer. She threw the soldier onto the pad in front of him. His claws came out before it could rise. “Welcome back,” she called. He pulled his blades free and looked up at the burning sky. “Where the big ugly motherfucker?” His voice came out rougher than he expected. Drawing a full breath still pulled at the bandages, and for the first few steps he could feel his body repairing itself around the movement. The pain was familiar. The absence before it was not. He remembered the pressure against his chest, the wall, then nothing until the transport ceiling and a warmth he could not place. He flexed his hands. The claws slid back, then out again without resistance. Whatever Apocalypto had tried to finish inside him had failed, but the time it had taken had cost the others something. He could see it in the way Rougie’s expression changed before she pointed. The bandages stayed wrapped across his chest as he left the ramp. He did not look for a shirt. Rougie’s smile faded. She pointed toward the plaza. Reen followed her hand and saw Z bent over Magnetrick. For a moment he stayed where he was. Then he left the ramp at a run. * * * Scambit was pinned beneath an overturned streetcar when Reen reached the avenue. Not crushed. Furious. An Afterborn stood above him firing toward the people behind the transit shelter. Scambit held one charged card between two fingers, waiting for an angle that would not bring the wreck down on his own head. Reen cut through the soldier’s elbow. Scambit looked up. “About damn time.” Reen lifted the broken edge of the streetcar. “You welcome.” Scambit rolled clear, slapped the card against the soldier’s back, and pulled Reen away before it exploded. The blast threw the Afterborn across the intersection. “You was dead,” Scambit said. “Been busy.” They turned together as four more soldiers came through the smoke. Scambit charged a fan of cards. Reen lowered his shoulders. The cards struck first. Reen went through the spaces the explosions opened, claws flashing across armor, bandages darkening where fresh wounds closed beneath them. Above them, Rougie caught a flying soldier by the face. She drained enough strength to stop its climb, then drove it into another with her shoulder. Nightwalka appeared on the second soldier’s back and vanished with it. A breath later he reappeared above an empty loading yard and let go. When he returned beside Scambit, his tail caught the ankle of an enemy trying to rise. Reen finished it without slowing. A stolen ship descended toward the embankment, its hatch opening above the frozen barricades. Ice Tray blasted its landing mechanism with freezing breath while Stormisha fed him river water. Ice jammed the hatch before the next rank of soldiers could leave. Reen sprinted beneath it, killed an Afterborn dropping from the opening, and drove his claws through the landing controls. Scambit’s cards exploded among the soldiers trying to follow. “Keep it low,” Gorge called over the receiver. “The Zolari can take it over the water.” Ice Tray froze a column beneath the buckling strut. It held long enough for two Zolari combat ships to catch the hull in beams of light and pull it away from the civilians. Reen dropped to the road, fresh damage already closing beneath his chest bandages. “You look terrible,” Ice Tray said. “You seen yourself?” Scambit and Nightwalka cut off the remaining soldiers while the captured ship lifted away. * * * Apocalypto grew again. This time the street could not hold the whole shape of him. His feet cracked the avenue. His shoulders rose above the roof where he had killed Magnetrick. He dragged one hand across the city’s low cloud and looked toward the municipal building. Jeanetta stood on its roof with X-Boy beside her. “You learned nothing,” he said. She could see Magnetrick’s body in the plaza below. Z had drawn his chair close enough to keep holding his hand. “I learned who you are.” She lifted her son clear of the roof as Apocalypto struck it. Concrete burst upward beneath their feet. X-Boy clung to her hand, flying unevenly, his fear pulling his body in two directions at once. “I can’t,” he said. “You already are.” Jeanetta caught Apocalypto’s next punch with her mind, stopping his fist short of her body. Its momentum drove her backward across the sky. X-Boy caught her arm. He changed while she watched. His legs lengthened. His face sharpened until a teenager hovered beside her, eyes wide in a face still unmistakably her son’s. Jeanetta brought them down beside an overturned delivery truck. As X-Boy’s feet touched the pavement, the blanket’s fastening slipped and the white cloth dropped to the ground, leaving him uncovered. He kept watching Apocalypto, unconcerned with the fallen blanket. Scambit hurried over. “Woah, woah there, X-Kid.” Scambit scooped up the blanket and lifted it back around X-Boy’s waist, holding it in place until the teenager took the edges. “Hold that. I got you.” Nightwalka appeared beside them, took one look, and vanished into the clothing store across the street. He stepped over a fallen display and grabbed a large black T-shirt and a pair of drawstring sweatpants. A moment later, he reappeared with the bundle. Jeanetta guided her son behind the overturned truck so he could dress. X-Boy accepted the bundle as calmly as he had accepted the blanket. He dressed behind the truck. When he stepped out, the shirt hung loose across his shoulders, and he was pulling the drawstring tight. Scambit glanced up at the giant, then back at him. “Try to stay that size till we done!” Jeanetta rose beside her son. He followed under his own power, quickly matching her height. X-Boy looked down at his hands. Then he looked at Apocalypto. He pushed. The giant struck the tower behind him hard enough to empty the remaining windows. Jeanetta felt the power leave her son and reach into every vibration around the building. She moved into his line of sight before he could push again. “Look where you’re sending him. People first.” Below, Nightwalka was still clearing a building entrance. A mother ran out holding a sleeping child while Misty held an Afterborn back against the wall. X-Boy lowered his hands. Apocalypto smiled. He had found something the boy was afraid to hit. “You hold back for them,” Apocalypto said. “They will never do the same for you.” X-Boy hovered beside Jeanetta, the oversized shirt moving around his teenage frame in the hot wind. Below him, Cyrus fired at the soldiers crossing the avenue. The sight steadied him until Apocalypto spoke again. “Your mother didn’t even know who your father was.” Jeanetta went still. Apocalypto saw it and pressed harder. “Ask her. She will tell you to wait. To be quiet. To let the grown people decide which truth you can bear.” “Don’t listen to him,” Jeanetta said. “Is it true?” X-Boy asked. She wanted to lead him away, but Apocalypto had chosen a question that would follow them. “I wasn’t sure at first,” she said. “Before you were born. That doesn’t change who your father is. Or how much we love you.” The giant’s smile widened. “He gave you a name while she could not speak. They will spend your whole life telling you what you are.” He extended his hand, palm upward, offering instead of striking. “Come with me. I will teach you what you can do. You will never have to make yourself small for them.” Jeanetta felt the enormous field around Apocalypto draw inward, gathering against his chest as her son turned toward him. The offered hand stayed open, but the rest of him had prepared to defend himself. He wanted the boy beside him because he had finally recognized what the boy could do against him. X-Boy looked at the waiting palm. For a moment, Jeanetta could not tell what he was thinking. He had been an infant only hours earlier and now carried the body of a teenager. The promise of answers had found the part of him that was frightened by every new thing he became. “You could stop them hurting each other,” Apocalypto said. “You could make them listen.” X-Boy looked down at Cyrus, then toward the plaza where Misty knelt beside Magnetrick. “You killed him.” “He chose to stand against me.” “So do I.” X-Boy shot forward before the offered fingers could close. His fist struck the center of Apocalypto’s palm with enough force to bend the enormous wrist backward. A white flash burst through the giant’s knuckles. The arm slammed against the roof of an evacuated building, splitting its concrete edge. Apocalypto’s smile disappeared. Three Afterborn broke away from the rooftops and flew at X-Boy, blasters raised. He turned toward them. Power rippled outward from his body, catching the soldiers before they could get close. Their armor unraveled first, then their bodies dissolved into drifting ash. All three were dead before a single shot left their weapons. X-Boy flew straight through the settling dust. X-Boy was already above his elbow. He flew along the arm, driving a blow into each armored joint as he passed. Plates buckled beneath his fists. Apocalypto swung his other hand across his chest, but the teenager dropped beneath it and hammered his ribs. The impact boomed down the avenue. The giant staggered sideways, one foot gouging a trench through the empty road. “Listen to me,” Apocalypto thundered. X-Boy accelerated straight into his stomach. Air burst from the giant’s mouth. Before he could fold forward, X-Boy climbed in a sharp arc and hit him beneath the jaw. His teeth snapped together. The teenager circled behind his head, flew down his spine, and drove both feet into the back of one knee. Apocalypto dropped hard enough to crush the abandoned cars beneath him. Jeanetta held the shattered roof in place while the last civilians ran out below. Through the drifting dust she could follow her son by the bursts of light racing around the giant’s body. He scarcely paused between attacks. A fist to the shoulder. An elbow against the throat. A flying blow beneath the ribs that lifted Apocalypto’s kneeling body off the road. The giant tried to catch him. His fingers closed on the fading light of a missed strike. X-Boy came around the other side and smashed into his cheek, tearing a long split through the gray skin. Apocalypto’s head struck the face of the cleared office block. Broken masonry poured around his shoulders. “You wanted me to see what I could do,” X-Boy said, hovering beyond his reach. He surged forward again. Apocalypto barely raised a forearm before the next blow struck. The armor burst apart, and the giant stumbled backward toward the occupied tower. Apocalypto moved toward the occupied tower, placing its glass wall between himself and the riverfront fighters. Office lights still burned on the upper floors. Jeanetta could see people crouched beneath desks near the windows, their faces turning toward the enormous shadow outside. Her son felt her hesitation. He looked from her to the tower, beginning to understand how a man so powerful could use people smaller than his fingers as protection. Jeanetta flew ahead of him and seized Apocalypto’s wrist with her mind. His fingers stopped inches from the occupied windows. He strained toward the building while she pulled the other way, trembling with the effort. X-Boy circled beneath the giant’s wrist and drove his shoulder upward into it, forcing the hand away from the windows. He twisted to strike again. Apocalypto anticipated the turn this time and closed his fingers around him. Jeanetta felt her son’s panic before she heard it. She drove a wedge of power between the fingers. X-Boy twisted free, one sleeve torn, and struck Apocalypto across the face with both hands. The blow turned the giant’s head. Windows shattered in an already cleared office block across the avenue. X-Boy drew back to attack again. “Keep him facing the empty street!” Jeanetta called. He changed his angle, breathing hard, and drove another burst of power into Apocalypto’s shoulder. Below them, Nightwalka’s dark figure appeared in one window, then another. People vanished from desks, stairwells, a stalled elevator caught between floors. Jeanetta held Apocalypto’s arm back and counted every trip. The giant wrenched his arm forward. Jeanetta’s heartbeat missed, and his fingertips scraped the building. X-Boy struck his wrist from below, knocking it clear of the windows. * * * Z reached for Jeanetta’s mind as the giant turned toward the last occupied tower. East side still clearing. Give us a minute. She answered with an image of her son beside her, older now, frightened by how much he could do. Z sent calm where he could, then turned his attention to the Afterborn beneath the tower entrance. For a breath, he made them see the road tilt beneath their feet. Their flight fields tried to correct a fall that was not happening. They struck one another above the evacuation buses. Deacon caught the shot one fired wildly. Gold light spread across his chest. “Clear,” he called. He raised his enormous blaster and fired upward through the clustered soldiers. The charged shot tore through the first Afterborn and exploded among the others, bringing them down in a shower of burning armor. Jubileequa sent sparkling bursts after the survivors. One opened like a flower of white light beneath a soldier’s blaster and blew it from the sky. Gorge fired into the tower’s lower entrance while Monsta carried a broken security door in front of the last civilians. They crossed behind it toward the Zolari ramp. At the curb, Ice Tray blew into a damaged water main, freezing its spray into a thick column. A second burst of breath snapped it from the pipe. Monsta kicked it into the soldiers pursuing them. Stormisha drew the smoke away from the exit in a hard upward current. Lightning crawled through the black cloud above Apocalypto’s head. Reen reached Misty at the entrance. “You get everybody?” She drove her claws into the eyes of the soldier she held, then shoved it toward him. “Last floor.” Nightwalka appeared with two office workers clinging to his shoulders. “Last floor clear.” Z sent the words upward. Now, Jeanetta. The buildings around him are empty. Behind the evacuation barrier, a little boy climbed onto the lowest step of a Zolari transport. His mother kept one hand around his waist while he watched Rougie sweep over the street and Nightwalka reappear beside the last family coming out. The boy lifted his fist. “X-Mans!" His thin voice carried through a sudden break in the gunfire. Nightwalka looked back and raised two fingers. Rougie glanced toward the transport, smiling for one brief moment before she turned toward the remaining soldiers. * * * Jeanetta’s heartbeat stumbled. It had happened once after the hospital, again in the tower. Now the pauses came close enough that she could feel the space between them. Her son reached for her. “Mom?” “I’m here.” Apocalypto tore the top of the cleared tower away and sent it toward the riverfront pad. Jeanetta stopped it in midair. X-Boy lifted both hands beneath hers. Together they turned the wreckage toward the empty construction site, where it struck the ground in a rolling cloud of dust. He looked back at her. He had felt the effort cost her something. “You don’t have to hold all of it,” he said. His voice deepened before the sentence ended. The teenager grew into a man beside her. His shoulders widened, his face settling into a shape Cyrus would have recognized in a mirror and still found unfamiliar. Gray streaks spread through the hair at both temples, cutting back along the sides of his head while the hair above remained dark. The loose T-shirt pulled tight across his chest and shoulders. His sweatpants strained around his thighs, the hems riding up above his ankles as his legs lengthened. X-Boy steadied her. For the first time, he was the one holding her up. The change in him unsettled Jeanetta more than the giant had. His face held traces of a future she had only begun to imagine: the set of Cyrus’s mouth, her own eyes, a strength neither of them had earned the right to ask of a child. He could make himself older, but she could still feel him searching for her whenever the noise grew too loud. Below them, Apocalypto tore a heavy section of his damaged armor free and swung it toward the plaza. X-Boy caught it before it reached Z and Misty. He stopped its movement so abruptly that the metal folded around the shape of his power. He sent it back into Apocalypto’s shoulder. The giant cried out. Jeanetta took the opening. She drove a narrow force into the damaged joint and pulled, separating armor from the flesh beneath. X-Boy flew into the gap, his fist wrapped in brilliant force. The punch tore straight through Apocalypto’s shoulder. Light burst from the hole behind it. Before the giant could turn, X-Boy drove another punch into his ribs. Flesh and broken armor erupted from his back. X-Boy pulled free, circled beneath the reaching arm, and punched through his abdomen. For an instant, Jeanetta could see the burning street through the opening. Apocalypto stumbled into the cleared avenue, crushing abandoned cars beneath his heels. X-Boy came at him again, gray-streaked hair swept back, each blow opening another hole in the enormous body. But the holes kept closing. Power crawled around their edges, drawing torn flesh together almost as quickly as X-Boy could punch through it. Apocalypto’s shoulder rebuilt itself with a wet crack. His reaching fingers steadied, waiting for the next attack. She changed her angle, pulling the road beneath his foot apart to break his balance. X-Boy struck at the same moment. Apocalypto caught the boy’s attack, turned it, and sent it back toward him. Jeanetta threw herself between them. She forced the attack upward, away from her son, but its force hurled her through the air. He caught her several yards below. Drawing breath left her with a pain beneath her breastbone that did not ease when she stopped moving. X-Boy wanted to carry her away. She felt that thought plainly, a small child’s wish inside the grown body beside her. She could also see Apocalypto looking past them toward the river, calculating how quickly he could reach the people they had worked so hard to save. Leaving him alive would only move this night to another place. Apocalypto struck them with a wave of force. Jeanetta and X-Boy thrust their arms forward together. Their combined power split the oncoming blast, sending it into the vacant buildings on either side. Whole floors collapsed inward. Glass and concrete rolled across the cleared avenue. Apocalypto stepped through the dust. His size made him a wall they could not go around. His force kept mending the damage they opened. Every separate attack gave him time to rebuild. Jeanetta looked at her son. “Together.” He held out his hand. She took it. The contact steadied the space between them. Their powers had crossed before, one filling a gap the other could not hold. Now Jeanetta let her son feel the shape of her intention: every fragment separated, every path back to a whole body held open until Apocalypto had nothing left to gather. He understood. She felt the answer before he spoke, a fierce pressure against her palm and the sudden stillness of his mind. For a heartbeat, the city beneath them seemed to sharpen. Rain hung in the air where Stormisha had turned it away from the fires. The river reflected the ships that had come to help. At the edge of the plaza, Cyrus looked upward with one hand lifted, unable to reach either of them. Jeanetta held that sight for as long as she could. Then she and her son turned toward Apocalypto together. * * * Gorge saw the change on his targeting screen. Two power signatures joined above the avenue. Around Apocalypto’s body, the field that held his enormous shape began to tremble. “Get down!” he shouted. Monsta pulled the last Zolari pilot behind the overturned bus. Reen caught Lady Longnails by the shoulder and dragged her clear of a falling section of wall. Nightwalka vanished with Z and reappeared beside Magnetrick’s body, where Misty waited. Stormisha climbed above the street, turning the dust away from them. Rougie flew beneath a falling slab and shoved it toward an empty parking lot. Above it all, Jeanetta held her son’s hand. She could feel what he was trying to do. He was reaching through the giant, finding the places where matter held together, opening them before Apocalypto could force them closed. But the return pressure was driving back toward X-Boy’s unpracticed mind. Jeanetta drew it into herself. He felt her do it. “No.” “Keep going.” “Mom—” “Finish it.” Their joined light crossed Apocalypto’s chest. He tried to step forward. His knee broke apart before his foot reached the ground. Pieces of armor and flesh separated in the air, held away from one another by the same force that tore through his shoulders. His scream shook the remaining windows. Jeanetta’s grip tightened. X-Boy pulled with her. Apocalypto came apart. His torso fractured into thousands of pieces, his huge arms breaking above the cleared street. The shock struck three vacant buildings around him. One folded inward floor by floor; another lost its front wall; the third fell against its neighbor and brought them both down in a grinding cloud. Stormisha drove the dust upward. Zolari ships caught the largest fragments heading toward the river. On the avenue, Monsta stood over the evacuees behind his shield while Ice Tray swept his freezing breath across the road, building a wall against the flying debris. When the light faded, Apocalypto was gone. There was no shape left trying to gather itself. No pulse on Gorge’s screen. Only broken matter settling across a ruined stretch of city. The shared life force vanished with him. Every surviving Afterborn fell dead. In the streets, soldiers collapsed mid-stride, blasters dropping from lifeless hands. Those in the air went limp and plunged between the buildings. One hit the road in front of Scambit without making a sound. Another dropped from Rougie’s grip before she could touch its bare skin. Deacon lowered his gun as the whole rank advancing toward him crumpled. Jubileequa’s next sparkling burst faded unopened between her fingers. Across the city, the soldiers’ power signatures went dark together. The stolen ships lurched as their crews died at the controls. Zolari pilots caught the nearest ships in beams of light and guided the others into emergency landings over the cleared docks. The gunfire stopped. Jeanetta’s hand slipped from her son’s. * * * X-Boy caught her before she fell. He carried her down through the dust, one arm beneath her shoulders, the other under her knees. Her head rested against his chest. She seemed too light after everything she had held above them. Cyrus reached the plaza first. “What happened?” X-Boy looked down. “She took it,” he said. “What was coming back at me. She took all of it.” Jeanetta opened her eyes. “Don’t... start blaming yourself.” Cyrus lowered her onto a folded coat. Z wheeled close, and she felt his mind reach gently toward hers. He found a body failing beneath an enormous quiet. Her heart was losing its rhythm. The damage had gone beyond exhaustion; the force she had carried had torn through the living pathways that kept it beating. He could reach her thoughts. He could not make those pathways whole. Jeanetta looked at him and understood before he spoke. “No professor speech,” she whispered. He closed his eyes once. Reen dropped beside her, chest bandages loose and bloodstained. A slight smile touched Jeanetta’s lips. “Knew your stubborn ass wasn’t done.” Cyrus looked at him. “Give her room.” “She ain’t asking me to move.” “She can barely breathe.” “And you arguing over who get to sit closest?” Cyrus’s voice sharpened. “You don’t know when to stop.” Jeanetta lifted two fingers between them. “Damn. Y’all still fighting over a seat? Pull up a chair and shut the fuck up.” Neither answered. Reen sat back. Cyrus stayed beside her hand. * * * For several seconds, no one trusted the silence. Beyond the plaza, Deacon kept his huge blaster trained on the fallen Afterborn. None moved. Jubileequa stepped between the bodies while Gorge checked the silent life readings again. Monsta lifted one soldier away from a damaged exit. Its body hung slack in his hands. Zolari troops secured the abandoned weapons and cleared the dead soldiers from the rescue routes. Once they were certain the Afterborn would not rise, the team gathered beside Jeanetta. She watched them arrive. Misty with dust in her red hair. Nightwalka holding his mother’s wrist. Lady Longnails with one sleeve torn away. Ice Tray stepping closer, his breath still rough from the effort. Rougie knelt beside her and pulled on both gloves before taking her shoulder. “You ain’t supposed to do this,” she said. X-Boy sat at her feet, still grown, trying to make his hands stop shaking. He leaned close. “I’m right here, Mom.” Cyrus brushed a strand of hair from her face. “X-Boy,” he told her softly, glancing at their son. “That’s what I named him.” X-Boy wiped his face with his sleeve. “I like it.” She looked from him to Cyrus. “If he likes it, I love it.” Reen lowered his head. For once he had nothing to add. Jeanetta looked around the circle, then back at Cyrus and her son. “Take care of him. I love y’all.” Cyrus nodded, unable to speak. X-Boy laid his forehead against hers. She held his face between her hands until her fingers could not keep their strength. Cyrus caught them as they fell. Reen watched her face, waiting for another breath. When none came, a tear slipped down his cheek. He made no move to wipe it away. For a little while, nobody moved. Then X-Boy made a sound no change in his age could make older. * * * By morning, the city had begun counting. Ambulances filled the river road. Fire crews crossed the ruined district with Zolari engineers beside them. Gorge helped map the unstable floors while Monsta carried sections of collapsed concrete away from the rescue lanes. The vacant towers had taken the worst of the final strike, but no one called the destruction clean. Shops were gone. Homes stood open to the weather. People searched for names on hospital lists and waited for phones to ring. The Afterborn ships were brought down and secured. Deacon’s crews removed the weapons and checked every fallen soldier. All were dead. Whatever had sustained them had ended with Apocalypto; no command system remained capable of bringing them back. Apocalypto did not return. Cyrus sat in a medical shelter with X-Boy against his side. By then the boy had chosen a teenage body again. Someone had found him different clothes to wear. Every time Cyrus moved, he looked up. “I’m here,” Cyrus told him. He said it as often as he needed to. Outside, Z waited beside the covered bodies of Magnetrick and Jeanetta. Misty sat with him. They had no argument left to finish. * * * Two days later, Jubileequa and Deacon prepared to return to Orukai. Their people still needed a home to rebuild. “You could come,” Deacon told Gorge, his enormous blaster slung across his back. Gorge looked toward Stormisha, then shook his head. “I’m staying.” Jubileequa hugged her old friend. “Answer when we call.” “I will.” Stormisha stood beside him as they watched the ships rise into a blue-white portal above the river. Orukai’s distant sky showed through for a moment before the opening closed. * * * Hothead and Jugga-knot had been recovered from the tower before the Zolari departed. The previous morning, Gorge had returned with a Zolari recovery crew. Nightwalka had guided them through the passages he remembered. Lady Longnails went with them, and Ice Tray waited at the service entrance until they came back. No one asked either of them to explain why. The four graves stood beside one another on a quiet rise beyond the mansion grounds: Hothead, Jugga-knot, Magnetrick, and Jeanetta. At the burial, Z spoke without a podium. Misty stood beside him. Cyrus held X-Boy’s hand, and Reen waited on the other side of the boy. When the others stepped away, Lady Longnails remained beside Jugga-knot’s grave. Ice Tray put a small flame-colored flower in front of Hothead’s name. Months later, when the grass had taken root and the work at the mansion was nearly finished, they all came back together. X-Boy placed two drawings beside Jeanetta’s stone. He had drawn himself between his parents, his mother smiling beneath a cloud of enormous curls and Cyrus wearing a visor bigger than his head. On the second drawing, Reen stood beside them, shorter than everybody else, with six crooked claws and an angry face. Cyrus crouched beside him. “She’d like that.” “I know.” Misty rested one hand on Magnetrick’s headstone. Z touched the other side, thumb moving once over the carved letters. Reen set no bottle down. He stood quietly until everyone was ready to leave. * * * The new mansion opened with wet paint on one stair rail. Monsta carried laboratory equipment through the doors, his old beanie low over his dreadlocks. He was clean-shaven now, wearing a clean shirt, trousers that fit, and boots of his own. He stood tall beneath the weight. The building was both a home and a school. The old rooms had been rebuilt; a university wing now held workshops, classrooms, and space for young mutants who had learned too much about fear before anyone taught them control. Funds Magnetrick had set aside for his own future helped pay for a future he would never see. Z kept his name on the scholarship papers. In the first morning class, a girl floated three pencils above her desk and lost all of them when somebody sneezed. Z waited until the laughter settled. “Again,” he said. “You do not have to be perfect to continue.” Across the hall, Monsta placed a broken radio in front of six students. “Before yuh use power to fix it,” he told them, “understand what wrong with it.” One boy raised his hand. “What if my power makes it worse?” Monsta turned the radio over. Two screws fell out. “Then yuh already know what not to do next.” * * * Nightwalka had decided to give battle rap a try. At a local club’s open battle night, Misty and Lady Longnails had claimed spots near the stage before he could tell them not to embarrass him. His opponent had spent three rounds making jokes about his tail. By the fourth, Misty had stopped pretending she was only there to support him. She stood near the front of the crowd with Lady Longnails, glaring at the stage as though the man had personally disappointed her. Nightwalka adjusted his fitted cap and took the microphone. He let the room quiet. “You said I vanish whenever it’s pressure, and that might be true.” He vanished. He reappeared beside his opponent’s girlfriend, who looked him over and smirked at him. “Now ask your girl who she’d rather disappear with—you?” The room erupted. He vanished again and reappeared onstage. Lady Longnails laughed so hard she bent forward. Misty threw both hands up. “That’s my son!” Nightwalka tried to hold his battle face. He failed when he saw her. The host took Nightwalka’s wrist and raised his arm, declaring him the winner over the noise. At the edge of the stage, Ice Tray held up a phone to record the result. He laughed so hard the picture shook. He smiled when Nightwalka pointed toward the camera. * * * Peaches found Stormisha in the dressing room trying to decide whether an earring looked expensive enough to justify what she had paid for it. “So let me get this straight,” Peaches said. “The last man was purple, the next one builds space guns, and you still coming in late on Saturdays.” “Girl, I saved a city.” “And I saved your locker. We both busy.” Stormisha laughed and fastened the earring. She had told Peaches some of it. The rest belonged to people who were gone, or to a boy who deserved to grow up without his whole life becoming dressing-room gossip. “You good, though?” Peaches asked. Stormisha looked at her in the mirror. “Getting there.” A knock came at the open door. Gorge stood beyond it in a dark jacket, beard trimmed, hair clean and pulled back. Without dust, bruises, and a gun harness dragging at his shoulder, he looked rested enough for Stormisha to forget what she had been about to say. Peaches looked at him, then at her. “Oh.” Gorge held up the takeout bag in his hand. “You said you hadn’t eaten.” Stormisha took the bag and kissed him at the doorway. When he stepped aside to answer a call from Monsta, Peaches leaned close. “That’s the space-gun man?” “He a lil older than my usual type, but…my man, my man, my man.” Peaches shook her head. “Go eat before you start levitating. He is fine though.” * * * At the casino, Scambit wore a jacket nobody at the mansion believed he had bought legally. Rougie sat beside him with both gloves on, watching a man explain why the next hand would change his luck. The man had explained this three hands earlier. Scambit listened with the respectful attention of somebody preparing to take more of his money. “You sure you want another?” Scambit asked. “Deal.” Rougie hid her smile behind her glass. He dealt. The man lost. When he finally left, Scambit gathered the chips and glanced toward her. “Don’t look at me like that.” “Like what?” “Like you know something.” “I know you counting how much you can spend before I ask where it came from.” He slid a stack toward her. “Dinner?” “You paying with my money?” “Thought it was our money.” She stared at him until he began to worry. Then she took his arm. “Don’t push it.” He went with her, leaving the next table for another night. * * * Reen returned to the bar on a Thursday. He took his usual seat and drank, letting the ordinary noise settle around him. When his phone buzzed, he almost ignored it. Cyrus had sent a picture of X-Boy beneath a basketball hoop, holding a ball that looked too large for him. Underneath it: He says you scared to lose. Reen looked at the message. “Little motherfucker.” He finished his drink, left money on the counter, and took his jacket from the stool. * * * The backyard court still smelled of fresh asphalt. Cyrus dribbled toward the basket with his back to X-Boy, keeping the ball high whenever his son reached for it. “You gotta work for it.” “I am working.” “Then move your feet.” X-Boy planted his sneakers and pushed against Cyrus’s hip. At six years old, he barely moved him. From the sideline, Reen leaned against the fence with his arms folded. “Real impressive. Bullying somebody who still use a booster seat.” Cyrus looked over his shoulder. “You want next?” “Handle this one first.” Cyrus lifted the ball above his head. “Come get it.” X-Boy looked up. Then he grew. His sneakers lifted clear of the ground as the rescue-cloth practice uniform Gorge had made him expanded with his body. His face lengthened, his shoulders broadened, and a grown man stood behind Cyrus, taller and older-looking than his father. He plucked the ball from Cyrus’s hands. “Got it.” Cyrus turned just in time to watch his son take two strides and dunk. Reen’s grin spread slowly across his face. X-Boy dropped from the rim. “That’s game.” “You changed sizes,” Cyrus said. “You said work for it.” At the classroom window, Z paused with a book in his hands. Monsta came up beside him, beanie crooked, and looked out at the court. Cyrus tried to explain something about rules. Reen kept grinning. X-Boy shrank back to six, his clothes settling around him, and tucked the ball beneath one arm. From here, he looked small enough to be carried again. Cyrus gave up the argument and held out his hand. His son slapped it, laughing. Z stayed at the window another moment. Beyond the court stood the rise where four names faced the afternoon sun. He could see the path leading there from the house, worn now by feet that kept returning. Below him, Reen stepped away from the fence. “I got next.” * * * A Hood in Orukai. The celebration rally filled the streets that were still standing. Between roofless apartment buildings, neighbors had strung salvaged lights over the block. Music thumped from a speaker balanced on a stack of repair crates. Orange, yellow, and teal faces crowded around steaming food trays while people leaned from patched balconies to join the cheers below. For one evening, nobody was hauling rubble. Above a battered corner store, a screen replayed the news from Earth. Apocalypto was dead. Mr. Diabolical was dead. Every repetition brought another roar from the crowd. Some Zolari danced in the street. Others held one another, crying too hard to speak. The reporter spoke over images of ancient carvings and ruined worlds. “His birthplace remains unknown. Apocalypto arrived on Earth thousands of years ago and ruled there, leaving his likeness on temple walls. He later conquered other planets, ruling their people or destroying those who resisted. Orukai was among the last. His reign has finally ended.” Three teenage friends stood on the store’s cracked concrete steps beneath the screen. The teal-skinned one leaned forward as footage of the city battle began, his larger eyes following the fighters through the smoke. “X-Mans is way better than the Revengerz.” His orange-skinned friend waved him off. “Man, miss me with that shit. Da Bulk would whoop Rasta Monsta ass.” The third teen, a girl with yellow skin and scuffed boots propped on the curb, considered the screen. “Not gon lie, I would love to see Cyrus and Mista ’Merica go head to head.” “Nah,” the first boy said. “Reen versus Black Fang would go crazier.” All three started talking at once. The orange-skinned boy got to his feet to explain his point, nearly knocking over somebody’s drink. A man in a trench coat stopped beside the steps. His bright yellow skin, slightly larger eyes, and smooth temples marked him as Zolari. Broad hands rested at the edges of his open trench coat. Yet the face was unmistakable beneath those differences, framed by familiar white hair and a familiar striped suit beneath his coat. “You kids like the X-Mans?” The girl lowered her boots from the curb. The boys stopped arguing. “What if I told you you could be just like them?” Another cheer swept through the rally. The stranger waited, smiling, until it passed. The teal-skinned boy looked him over. “Who the hell is you?” He grinned at all three of them. “I go by Dr. Benjamin Dover,” he said, the grin widening. “But you can call me Ben.”

X-Mans Ate-Teen: Damn, I Didn’t Want It To Be Over

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